Kexikus

Even if it's rapidly decaying, there would still be normal street traffic of people driving to work or something. But I will add far less traffic than on Coruscant or Nar Shaddaa the latter of which you can see in this video btw:

After a long fight against the Korriban wastes module I finally finished the last BoSSR skybox: That leaves two mod skyboxes to do. I think those shouldn't take long but then again I thought the same of the skybox above... I'll keep you updated. In the meantime I also changed my mind and added some traffic to all Coruscant skyboxes: I'll do the same for Nar Shaddaa and probably Taris as well to better sell the cityscape of those planets.

TSLPatcher has a functionality that lets you compare an edited gff file to the original and will then create the change list based on that. Setting that up even for your dialog shouldn't take more than 5 minutes once you figured out how it works. And while dialogs are prone to breaking when used in multiple mods even with TSLPatcher to patch them, it would still make it way more likely that your mod can be used with others.

I did a quick check through my SWTOR archive but only found 3d models. Honestly though, I also don't think that adding them would be worth the effort for one tiny module in a mod that not many people even use (compared to vanilla TSL). In the vanilla Coruscant module you would only barely see them as well. Thanks for the suggestion though, I might have to keep that in mind for Nar Shaddaa.

Progress has been going somewhat slow but still steady lately. But I figured I might as well show some of the stuff that has happened. Let's start with the full quality Coruscant skybox, shown here as part of the Coruscant mod, but it's the same that's also used in vanilla: Next up we have one of the three Korriban skyboxes used in BoS:SR. This one is the same as the TSL Korriban skybox. One of the others is the K1 vanilla Korriban skybox and the last one is unique to BoS:SR but I haven't started that one yet. And finally a screenshot of what I'm currently working on (apart from rendering the TSL skyboxes): BoS:SR Taris The lighting of all these layers doesn't quite match yet but I'm getting there. And as a final note for today: I'm pretty sure that I want to make skyboxes for Yavin IV and Ord Mantell. But I have to look at their modules first to see if that's possible with the quality goal I have in mind. If it is, both of them shouldn't take very long.

Since you're creating area models (although I'm not quite sure which software you're using and I don't think you'll get around actual 3d modeling if you want to continue this project), here's two threads that you should look at that contain pretty much all the information needed to create custom areas which is totally possible even though it's obviously a lot of work: And finally, here's a tutorial on lightmaps:

In that case I suggest you redownload TSLRCM and check whether you can find the file in there. I doubt that anyone has a database of TSLRCM edits by file

Where did you find the file? If it's in the Override and you only have TSLRCM installed, then it's from TSLRCM. If it's in a .mod, you can compare it to the version in the corresponding .rim and see if there are any differences. If there are, then again it's from TSLRCM. In all other cases it's a vanilla file.

Thanks! Work has been continuing with the first TSL skyboxes being rendered in their full glory. As an example, here's one of the Onderon skyboxes including holes in the turret gun barrels: At the same time, I'm also working on the mod skyboxes. So far M4-78 and Coruscant are done designwise but still need to be rendered. That brings me to a question for all of you though. Is there any mod that I should include, i.e. make a skybox for, that is not already part of my plans? So far I want to make skyboxes for: M4-78 EP (TSL) Coruscant Jedi Temple (TSL) BOS:SR (K1) Green Grass for Dantooine (K1) Maybe. I'm not sure about that one yet, so let me know if that's something you're interested in. It wouldn't be a lot of work so I'll probably do it anyway, but knowing what the community actually wants would help. I'm also considering Yavin IV and Ord Mantell for K1. I haven't played either of those, so I can't say how good or popular they are. So please let me know if that's something you're interested in. Are there any other mods that I should include? Please let me know.

I want to add something to this in that alpha blending seems to be related to the "background geometry" setting in models. I think this setting is responsible for why the skybox is still visible in Figure 1 of the original post but I'm not quite sure, so I'll describe my situation: I had basically several flat meshes behind each other with textures A, B and C. They were ordered A B A B C with C being the skybox with no alpha channel and A and B both having semi-transparent parts in their alpha channel. In my original setup, neither of these meshes had the "background geometry" flag enabled (not even the skybox C). In that case the skybox would always render in the background behind the semi-transparent parts of A and B. If A and B occluded each other however, only the one with the higher alpha blending would render through the semi-transparent parts of the other. So if let's say A has an alpha blending of 1.0 and B one of 0.9, then I can see A through B but not vice-versa. If they both have the same alpha blending, it would still favor one of them. This seems to be related to the model hierarchy as described by JC here. Basically, they have to be linked to the base from back to front for the semi-transparency to work properly. Things changed however, when I changed the "background geometry" setting. I originally activated that only for A and B as I assumed that C already had it enabled which turned out not to be the case. Once I did that, the alpha blending for A and B no longer mattered. Both A and B would now be rendered through the semi-transparent parts of each other. But now C would no longer render behind them. Once I enabled "background geometry" on C as well everything worked as intended. Now all meshes are rendered behind semi-transparent parts of all other meshes with their alpha blending all set to 1.0. So maybe "background geometry" is some kind of override for alpha blending in that meshes with that setting enabled are always rendered behind semi-transparent textures but if they themselves are semi-transparent, no non-background-geometry-mesh is rendered behind them. Maybe this can help in some instances where only changing the alpha blending value doesn't work.

I'd certainly use that as a replacement for Ajunta Pall's sword if you release it. Great work as always!

You're welcome to do so once they're fully done

There is no irradiated skybox in the original M4-78 but I changed the models so that there is now. And yes, it will change once the radiation is cleared. Sure thing. Here's an example. You can also see some more screenshots in other posts I made over the last months or so. As to the questions of why I'm not releasing K1 yet. There's no specific reason for why I want to release them simultaneously, but that's the route I want to go. One reason is that I still need to make screenshots and stuff like that that will take some time and I'd rather focus on getting all skyboxes done first before I go down this rabbithole so that I can then make all screenshots for both games at the same time. Depending on how long finishing TSL takes I might decide to release K1 earlier but not before I've finished the add-ons like BOS:SR and I haven't even started those. With the exception of Taris that I mentioned before, they shouldn't take too long though. I'll keep you guys posted. We'll see how it goes. Rest assured though, it won't be long now (at least compared to the 3+ years this project has been in the work now... )

Milestone reached: All K1 skyboxes, backdrops and models are finished or in short: Everything for vanilla (!) K1 is done Before you get your hopes up though, that does not mean that the release is imminent! The current plan is to release the mods for both games simultaneously, although that might change. However, I want to have the addons for K1 ready at least before I release it. That's mostly BOS:SR support which includes a Taris skybox that will probably take a while to do. The reason for why getting K1 actually done was that I had to do some tweaks to Kashyyyk and the Tatooine buildings, but mostly I iterated through dozens and dozens of iterations of improving Manaan as I wasn't really happy with the old version. The sky was too dark for instance and there were issues with K1s terrible bloom effect. But after several weeks I finally reached a result that I really like. Sadly I don't have a screenshot, so you'll have to wait for closer to the release to see it. Another thing that kept me busy was M4-78 which is now pretty much done. You've seen most of it before so it was mostly busywork of adding backdrops to all modules, tweaking fog, etc. But it also included the irradiated skybox: Certainly looks unhealthy, doesn't it?

I've seen your research on texture alpha / semitransparent textures and mesh hierarchy but I was wondering if you or anyone else knows how semitransparent textures work within a single mesh. Like in your example if window A and B would belong to the same mesh. In that case it's obviously not the way they're linked to the odysseybase but something else that determines the order of their rendering. I have yet to experiment with this myself but since I don't know when I'll have the chance to do so, I figured I'd take my chance and see if anyone else has come across this issue before. I've noticed the issue in K1s Dune Sea area where there are backdrop planes for Anchorhead. Those all belong to the same mesh but the ones in front create holes in the ones in the back where they are semitransparent. Not sure if the vanilla textures have semitransparent pixels, but it's visible with custom textures. I could of course split them to different meshes but that doesn't seem like an elegant solution.

What would be the benefit of rendering the rooms individually though? You could just as well render the entire area at once. And it doesn't have to be scaled down, there is no limit to the map texture size.

I have no idea either. Didn't even know that Max supports lightmaps until DP mentioned it. I would really like to see something like that implemented though.

That's exactly what I was suggesting since it really is very simple to load the area into Max. The problem is mainly the missing geometry when viewing the area from above and the issue of getting the lightmaps into Max. Doing this manually for each mesh would take forever.

Honestly, I think it would be much easier to load the modules in Max and then render from there with an orthographic camera. Granted, you don't get the exact ingame lighting so that would have to be set up to look good but you get around the facing issue where not everything is rendered ingame depending on where your character looks. And stitching perspective renders taken from different places is a real pain as nothing matches up. The biggest issue with either of these methods is something else though. The modules in both games were stripped of all geometry that cannot be seen during normal gameplay or in other words: They're not meant to be seen from above and you'd get gaps and missing roofs and whatnot everywhere. I assume that the original maps were rendered before the unnecessary geometry was cut or something like that, but for a good looking map that would have to be restored at least in parts. Either way, I like the idea even though I don't know how feasible it actually is.

I really don't know how the oneliners work so all I can do is guess but have you tried making a copy of a vanilla TSL module and check if they work in there? If so you can then maybe start checking for differences in the modules as it's obviously not the dlg file that's the issue.

I didn't take it as an offence, sorry if I came across like I did. But to your point, as I render the final versions of the skyboxes, I'm going through them and when I see something like the previous mismatch on Korriban, I fix it before rendering the full version. Right now, I'm doing the same for Manaan and I'm pretty sure Telos will get a similar treatment as well. With the goal always being to get the best blend between skybox and terrain that I can achieve while maintaining the vanilla atmosphere. And as I said, feel free to go through the screenshots I posted and if you find a skybox where you feel that I missed this goal, please let me know and I'll keep a close eye on that one once it comes to its final render.

It's always been one of my main goals to stay true to the vanilla look. Whether I've been successfull in that endeavour you can judge for yourself by looking at the screenshots posted in this thread.

That's a shame. Thanks for the answer though!

Uhm, not to disappoint you but there's actually more smoke in the second version. It might look like less because I recorded the second one from a different location but it's actually four plumes now where it was three before (two of which were still static in the video).

I did just that. Tweaked th column some more. It's only that one particular direction where I have a lot of smoke and that's the direction of the Industrial Zone. As you can see in the video below, there's much less smoke in the other directions and I might even reduce it further for the other modules.